Iraq in Political Crisis Following U.S. Withdrawal

Immediately after the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Iraq’s political crisis has deepened considerably.

The Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab who previously served as general secretary of the Islamist Iraqi Islamic Party. Hashemi fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. There, Kurdish political parties proposed to mediate tensions between the State of Law bloc led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party and the opposition Iraqiya bloc headed by Ayad Allawi.

The allegations against Hashemi include the charge that he managed and funded a death squad over the past two years, with a possible role in an attack on Iraq’s parliament last month that may have included Maliki as an assassination target.

It should be emphasized that if these accusations regarding the vice president are true, they should not come as a shock. At least one member of Hashemi’s family had proven ties to terrorism: his nephew Asad al-Hashemi was responsible for organizing an assassination attempt on Mithal al-Alusi in February 2005. Asad planned the attack because Alusi had visited Israel the previous year.

Asad was eventually convicted and sentenced to death in absentia, but al-Hashemi’s political allies tried to have the charges against Asad dropped by withdrawing from the Iraqi government at the time. The sentence was upheld, and Asad fled the country.

Nonetheless, the current charges against Asad’s uncle show many signs of a political attack by Maliki on someone perceived to be a rival. It has been widely noted that Hashemi’s bodyguards are giving televised confessions, a stock feature of prominent legal cases in Iraq during the post-war period.

Since the Iraqi judiciary system primarily relies on confession as a means of securing convictions, it could well be that Hashemi’s bodyguards have either been tortured to bring forth confessions — a widespread method in Iraqi prisons for dealing with suspected militants — or they have been bribed, which should not come as a surprise in light of the rampant corruption in Iraq.

The political context of Maliki’s attack on Hashemi is the growing frustration expressed by al-Iraqiya over Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies. Under the compromise agreement of a year ago, the Defense, Interior, and Security Ministries as well as a designated “National Council for Higher Strategic Policies” (NCHSP) should have been awarded to al-Iraqiya. They had insisted on the right to form a new government because they won the largest number of seats for a single bloc in the March 2010 elections. In return, Maliki was allowed to retain his position as prime minister for a second term.

However, Maliki has gone back on the terms of the compromise, trying to control the Defense, Interior, and Security ministries. Further, the proposed NCHSP has not even been implemented. It still merely exists on paper, for there has been much bickering as Maliki has sought to fill the planned body with his own followers.

At the same time, many members of al-Iraqiya have expressed alarm over Maliki’s arrest of hundreds of Sunnis in Salahaddin and Anbar provinces on vague allegations of Ba’athism.

Feeling pressure from Maliki, the judiciary has increasingly ruled in his favor. As analyst Reidar Visser noted, the higher judicial council stated that it intends to “create a special investigatory committee to look into the accusations against Hashemi’s security detail — a judicial approach that in itself seems ad hoc and extraordinary.”

While Allawi and his bloc indicated at the start of this month that they wanted a reconciliation process with Maliki and his followers, they quickly switched to a political offensive against the premier. Saleh Mutlaq, Sunni deputy premier, accused Maliki of being the most dictatorial ruler in Iraq’s history in an interview with CNN. Allawi’s bloc has also boycotted the parliament and worked with the Sadrists — who form a key part of Maliki’s ruling coalition — to push for a general amnesty law in the parliament, which is opposed by Maliki.

The role of the Sadrists is important to examine, because it illustrates how personal power struggles are as much an issue in Iraqi politics as the question of sectarian affiliation. While Sadrists have not hesitated to accuse some members of al-Iraqiya and other Sunni politicians of being Ba’athists, it is not always the case that they simply side with Maliki and his followers.

In the aftermath of the 2010 elections, the Sadrists entertained the idea of forming a coalition with al-Iraqiya. Even after joining State of Law’s coalition, the Sadrists refused to endorse Maliki for a second term as prime minister without incorporating al-Iraqiya into the government in some way. They feared the possibility of a reignited Sunni insurgency in light of the fact that their own militia, the Mahdi Army, had been forced to disband in 2008 following Maliki’s “Operation Charge of the Knights” against the Mahdi Army in Basra.

In a similar vein, the Sadrists offered to act as mediators between al-Iraqiya and State of Law at the start of this month, and have not joined Maliki in his attack on Hashemi, lamenting the fact that this fallout has emerged immediately after the American withdrawal.

In short, it is not strictly accurate to characterize the present crisis as a political conflict between the Shi’a and Sunni Arabs. It should rather be seen in the context of Maliki’s efforts to concentrate as much power in his hands as possible. Indeed, it is telling that he has just gone back on his promise not to run for a third term as prime minister, a pledge he made in response to protests in the country that reached their zenith in February of this year.

If the allegations against Hashemi fail, Maliki will have made a big political mistake, for Hashemi has been one of the Sunni Arab members of the parliament willing to compromise with the government. A full-blown, renewed Shi’a-Sunni civil war is a remote prospect, but there is a significant threat to stability from potential violence between political factions.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and has done work as an intern for the Middle East Forum.

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1.
ZZZ

It looks more and more as if all those Iraqi inhabitants who seized on the American presence in their country as the chance of a lifetime to emigrate had the right idea.

Why are we surprised? Obama made his disagreement with the Iraqi war quite plain. Why did we assume that he would be content to simply admit he was wrong and just be successful there despite his opposition. Through inaction and precipitous withdrawal he has managed to bring about the political defeat he, and his allies on the left, really wanted in the first place.

Saddam was a secular Sunni dictator. Iraq is 67% Shia and 33% Sunni. The Shiites will now take revenge on the Sunnis for what Saddam did to them. Iran will take over Iraq… We can thank George Dumbo Bush and his neocon misadvisers for recreating the ancient Persian Empire…

Democracy cannot work in a nation where the people are living in the 5th century, 6th century, 15th century, or 16th century. Democracy is a very fragile form of government. It requires a loyal population. It requires a civil population. It cannot work in a barbaric population.

I actually was on the side of George Bush – GHW – when he did not go all the way, when he did not decimate the revolutionary guard… I thought it was a brilliant strategic maneuver not to do so, because he left a smaller Iraqi army in place, he left Saddam in place – much weaker of course…as a counterbalance to Iran…and it maintained a balance in the Middle East – that his idiotic son seemed to have not understood at all…

But then Bush comes along, and gung ho kills Saddam, kills Saddam’s sons, destroys the revolutionary guards, destroys the Iraqi airforce… and what do we have today? We have a much enlarged emboldened Iran, which is meddling around the world, all because of Bush’s mistake…

“We brought democracy to Iraq”… What democracy? Brought nothing… All we did was throw out the Sunni and put in the Shia…and now created exactly what I feared would happen…creating a Shia presence from Iran to the Euphrates…so ancient Persia is now basically back…all because of George Dumbo Bush and his foreign policy misadvisers.

This president called this an end of a war and we also heard it was an end to hostilities. We still have troops in where, Japan, Germany, South Korea, but not Iraq. Someone will respond, but we pulled out of Vietnam, peace with honor, and look at where that got us. Somebody once told me, the world was gonna roll our president…..

A complete waste of space. It misses the target by a mile. The Iraqi Shia power grab in Bagdad is Iran’s answer to the prospect of loosing Syria. But most importantly, Iraq and Afghan (fiasco) is Neocon’s gift to Iran. Don’t be fooled by the posturing and bravado. Israel and Iran are bosom buddies.

arab society is a prime divider society.
we don’t understand the way they run things over here in the US.
See David Pryce Jones the closed circle.
once you understand how they perceive power and relationships, everything they are doing makes perfect sense.
Ideas like corruption, or terrorism are meaningless in this context. Using torture and death squads and bribes become means to end that is very clear to the players in a society like Iraq.
You have to stay around and force/enforce a new system for a couple of generations to see any real change.

No one should be surprised. No Islamic country has the necessary philosophical foundation to be a functioning democracy. The war was fought against individuals, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and whoever was the villain of the day not the ideology that fueled them, all the while Obama continues continues to extoll the virtues of Islam.
If we can’t tell the truth about who the enemy is we can never win. Just maybe honesty is the best policy.

Let them change the name of Iraq to “Greater Good:” then they can be reminded of their conspicuous failure by having an Orwellian name similar to the “Ministry of Peace,” or shame themselves into joining the 21st century and have it be a good name whose fundamental thought they will strive to fulfill.

You cannot have a decent nation where bickering and self-centered sectarianism and ancient feuds are only held at bay with a gun. The shia will bitch about Karbala in 680 A.D. until Kingdom come.

It was PNAC round table ineffectuals that created the mess in Iraq. President H. Bush ignored and shut them down, President W. Bush let them have their way and created the mess in Iraq / Iran. Not to mention to loss of American limbs, Lives and a 3 trillion dollar war tab.

Furthermore Iranian Spys like Mr. Chalabi played the Pentagon like a puppet master while being paid 400,000 per month, and is now Iraqi Oil minister, selling Gasoline back to Iran. Iranian Spys were feeding PNAC their information, who in turn were making decisions in War Rooms.

The W. Bush and Obama administrations are like watching Greek tragedy’s unfold.

Alex, the Iraq war cost was actually 910 billion dollars. A lot of money but not close enough to 3 trillion to go unchallenged. I would say you may have been looking at total US military expenditures during the Bush administration, but I think that total was around 4 trillion.

All I’m feeling regarding this news is schadenfreude. The Iraqi’s of all colors, stripes and religions have spent the last ten years blaming *all* their assorted ills on America. We, in return, have poured billions of American dollars into their rathole of a country, and lost over 4,000 American lives. And we got absolutely nothing out of it in recompense, including any oil contracts, never mind a thank-you for trying to rebuild their benighted country.

If they choose to go back to gleefully killing each other because the only civilized influence they have ever experienced has left, then, fine. It will be a continuing Darwinian experience watching the unfit hominids in that part of the world extinct themselves.

Just as we let the Somali’s kill each other off after they dragged naked American bodies through their dusty streets, I’m perfectly fine with letting Iraqi’s kill each other off as long as they have the bullets and swords to do so — without America ever having to buy them any more bullets or air conditioners or hemorroid cream. And I really don’t want any more of them coming to America as “refugees” either, since they appear determined to continue their killing ways once they get here.

Note to future administrations: nuke ‘em if you think they need to be nuked, but no more country-building, ever. And that includes Japan and Germany.

Iraq and Afghanistan will likely not become functioning western style democracies in our lifetime.

We let nation building get the better of us. We should simply have pulled back into heavily armed garrisons in the desert in Iraq, there simply to keep the Iranians out and the oil flowing. Pulling out wholesale – running away – sends the wrong message.

As for Afghanistan – hopeless. Drone war is the best solution. Kill bad guys who threaten us as soon as we identify them – from a strip mall in Vermont, by remote control.

When they are replaced, repeat, and so on. Manage the problem, until they decide to join civilization, which will be never.

Sacrificing our young men’s lives and limbs for these miscreants, under the ‘smart war’ rules of engagement laid down by Petraous et al is lunacy.

The only way we can win their hearts and minds is by committing suicide. So lets not even try. Lets keep them scared of us instead. It will work better. Familiarity breeds contempt, especially in the muslim world – it is an invitation to walk all over you.

We lost both Iraq and Afghanistan when we gave them back to local governments so quickly. Since then it has been nothing but sticking a finger in the dike until being called home for dinner.

Anyone who expected any differently simply has no clue as to history and what it takes to change a country/culture, and should not be allowed to run around loose presenting themself as an expert in the same.

But Obama and Clinton said that there was nothing to worry about even though we were pulling all of our troops out of Iraq. You mean they were both wrong, again? It’s getting to the point that whenever Obama and Clinton want to do ANYTHING, just do the opposite. That way, we may actually stand a chance.

I’m sorry but am I missing something. Will it really be a surprise to ANYONE over the next three years as the entire middle east returns to its roots of tribalism, so embedded and so deeply a part of the region for thousands of years.

Did anyone really believe that this region would embrace the values and culture of the United Staes Pre-Obama…an experiment in their minds of less than 235 years of age.